Looking this up online, I discovered that My Year in Girl Hell is actually a combo of four separate books – Crushed, Dumped, Burned and Trashed. That’s exactly how it felt – four books which could easily stand alone, but also worked beautifully as a single novel.

It’s the first year of high school in Australia and fours friends are trying to figure out how to live it. Lexie loves her old friends, but also finds she is making new friends and doesn’t want to have to choose between them, Michi finds that the online world can be a nasty place, Alysha wants to hit the popular group, no matter what, and Mia feels that she is being left behind.

With my rediscovered obsession with Judy Blume, I can see some strong influence here – Costain has created believable characters and, by changing perspectives, we see that what we think we know isn’t necessarily the case. Four unreliable narrators – oh, how totally wonderful.